Franklin

[Notebook of Medici accounts].

Publication:
[Italy], 1542-1547.
Format/Description:
Manuscript
222 leaves : paper ; 161 x 107 mm bound to 174 x 111 mm + 2 booklets (38 leaves)
Status/Location:
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Details

Subjects:
Medici, House of -- Archives.
Medici, Bivigliano de'.
Medici, House of.
Accounting -- Italy -- 16th century.
Farm management -- Italy.
Farm management.
Accounting.
Italy.
Form/Genre:
codices (bound manuscripts)
accounts.
credit records.
ledgers (account books)
recipes.
Manuscripts, Italian -- 16th century.
Manuscripts, Renaissance.
Archives.
Language:
Italian.
Summary:
Notebook of accounts of Bivigliano de' Medici for the years 1542-1547. The manuscript contains a wide range of records of transactions both in cash and in kind, some of them with short commentaries. Transactions concern farm management, including the purchase of cattle, swine, sheep, feed, trees, and sowing tools; household management, including the pay of servants, farmers and employees, the purchase of food and drink for private consumption, and of furniture and house accessories; settlement of debts and credits with either business counterparts or family members; and sale of produce and farm products (including oil and wine). Sometimes simple recipes (including one for a cake referred to in the manuscript as ciambellotto) are given, following the accounts of ingredients to be purchased for a specific preparation. There is also a small number of records of the yearly production of oil, wine and, sometimes, wheat. Scattered throughout the manuscript there are more narrative passages where the work of an employee is praised (or criticized), the state of a farm is described, or a situation that led to a debt or a credit is recorded. The manuscript has a lower flyleaf made from a leaf, printed on paper, of a contemporary edition of the Digesta of the Corpus juris civilis. Two alphabetical indexes, with lettered tabs, containing names of individuals that appear in the ledger, are sewn inside the upper cover of the manuscript. The first index is comprised of 20 pages, 2 of which are left blank, and its cover is made from a paper fragment (binding waste) of a 15th-century manuscript of Lucan's Pharsalia, with text written in one column with marginal notes and in a Gothic script; the second index is comprised of 18 pages, and its cover is made from a vellum fragment (binding waste) of a 14th-century manuscript of a summa iuris canonici alphabetica, with passages from summas by Goffredo da Trani and the cardinal Henricus de Segusio, also referred to as Hostiensis. The text is written in two columns with red initials and in a Gothic script, surrounded by a commentary written in a smaller script.
Notes:
Ms. codex.
Title supplied by cataloger.
Foliation: Paper, 222; contemporary foliation in ink, upper right recto.
Script: Written a in cursive script, perhaps by multiple hands.
Watermark: Similar to Briquet, Agneau pascal 48 (Florence, 1498); and Ancre 489 (Florence, 1519).
Binding: Contemporary vellum, no. 97 on spine; the heading Q[uaderno] settimo, no. 50 and letter H with decorative penwork on upper cover; lower cover wraps around upper cover with remnants of leather ties; decorative leatherwork on spine.
Origin: Written in Italy between 1542 (f. 1v) and 1547 (f. 196v).
Forms part of: Gondi-Medici Business Records.
Penn Provenance:
Sold by Bernard M. Rosenthal, 1961.
Cited in:
Described in Zacour, Norman P. and Hirsch, Rudolf. Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the University of Pennsylvania to 1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965), p. 206 (Ms. Lea 302).
Cited as:
Notebook of Medici Accounts (Ms. Codex 1368). Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.
Contains:
Lucan, 39-65. Pharsalia.
Goffredo, da Trani, -1245. Summa super rubricis Decretalium.
Henricus, de Segusio, Cardinal, approximately 1200-1271. Summa super titulis Decretalium.
Digesta.
OCLC:
302270732